Below creaking decks of the Antiquities Mistress, deep shadows reeked of briny bilge water. Thousands of memories filling my consciousness and that one stood out more than any other as it prefaced the change that would redirect my pivotal fates. I am called Tavine, and long ago, on a frost ridden night, the necromancer who conjured me into existence bound my ethereal spirit to the physical form of a ferret. Among our exclusive enclave of those straddling the straights between realms, they refer to my kind as Eritmas. We can only exist within the mortal world by means of a symbiotic arrangement with a Dantzari. Common folk here refer to those souls as witches. By then I had already been bound to several Dantzari, and the witch Le Croix, who I currently co-existed with, had been locked in this ship’s brig as it sailed through sweltering tropics. I, as his Eritmas and Familiar, also suffered the dismal circumstances, awaiting the quickly approaching inevitable.

With my Dantzari’s reputation for a spiteful demeanor and his sheer size larger than most mortals, the captain kept us isolated in the brig out of fear. Le Croix’s presence taller and broader than most men, he appeared all the more intimidating with a head full of waxed dread rolls and pox scared complexion dark as ebony despite the handsomeness of a well-defined jaw, rigid brow and ivory smile. His clothing reduced to a button less shirt and tan fitted knickers, he’d suffered a busted lip and deep gash along a cheekbone while being hauled below.

Eight days to sea and by chance the usual cabin boy servicing the squalid heat below deck had taken ill. In his place, the captain’s personal cabin boy had been sent with the daily ration of gruel. I shall always remember the moment I first laid eyes upon that boy’s face. A shaft of harsh light cutting through sea mist as he descended from the upper deck; his height made him seem older, as did the broad strength garnered over a childhood spent at sea.

As he approached the crude cell, I found him to be barely fourteen years. Eyes, blue as glacier ice, gazed at Le Croix with curious compassion above a long nose and wide set jaw. Hair wet and black as jet hung loosely to his shoulders. His aura whispered of things his mortal mind could not comprehend at that time; such a young body unaware of his well-seasoned soul’s true age. It took but a moment for him to notice me wrapped around Le Croix’s collar, my long sleek body behind my Dantzari’s neck with my tail draping down one shoulder, blending in with rolled locks. My masked face peered out at the boy from below a bone earring, and in the instant our eyes met, I knew our destinies had become inextricably intertwined....

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